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Baykeeper Update

Help Protect the Bay in Your Home

Posted November 21, 2016

For San Francisco Bay, the rainy season can bring a surge of pollution from sewage. Often the cause is the cooking and cleanup of rich foods, particularly holiday meals. Cooking rich foods like turkey, roasts, gravy, and desserts creates fats, oil, and grease that get washed down the drain during cleanup of pots, pans, and fryers.

Even small amounts of fat from your kitchen, plus small amounts from all your neighbors, can add up to a sewer line clogged with hardened fat. Sewage can then back up in homes, yards and even neighborhood streets. From there, sewage can be washed into storm drains, where it flows directly into local creeks and the Bay.

Sewage pollution causes problems that range from skin infections in swimmers to disease in sea lions to algae blooms that choke off the oxygen supply of fish and aquatic plants.

We can all keep our kitchens from polluting the Bay—and avoid sewage backups in our homes and neighborhoods.